


Oh, I Might Just Try

by pastel_x_tea



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: < Those warnings also apply to the material that inspired this work so please stay safe!!, Comfort, Gen, I don't know what to tag this honestly, Implied/Referenced Mental Institutionalization, Mental Health Issues, Platonic Cuddling, Recovery, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, Trigger warnings for self-harm and suicide, not za//dr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 17:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20764538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastel_x_tea/pseuds/pastel_x_tea
Summary: It has been a lengthy, lengthy 25 days since the incident which brought Dib here. It would be a lengthy, lengthy road ahead. But it would not be yet another road he was destined to walk alone.





	Oh, I Might Just Try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marblehead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marblehead/gifts).

> If anyone reading this work is looking for a sign to continue their fight, whether that fight be against self-harm, suicidal ideation, or anything else within their own mind, this is that sign. Help is available to those who need it. My inbox on my blog is always open to people in need of support.
> 
> EDIT: The fic that inspired this one was deleted, so fair warning that this fic may not make as much sense anymore!

_“ ib - onster! ow any ills id ou ake?”_

_He heard his own words in his head. _I took a lot. _An understatement. 5? Not enough. 10? Not enough. 25? By god, not enough. Never enough. Two bottles of the strongest things he could find in his house should do the trick. A few had been taken from each bottle, leftover prescriptions lying around from ages ago, but if the labels were an indication, the number was within the ballpark of 120 pills. Enough… right?_

_He did not hear the words coming out of his mouth, but thought the slightest wisp of thought at the time about what they sounded like. _IIIIIIIII toooouuuukkkaaa looohhhwwwt, _perhaps. An incomprehensible mess of last words for an incomprehensible mess of a human life. Was he meant to be something? If so, he was saddened to report that he had become nothing. Disappointed in himself, but hardly surprised. Such great expectations, and yet nobody but him could’ve fallen short of them._

_5, 10, 25 pills. Hundreds of ideas of who he should be, minor successes, points at which he could have changed._

_Never enough. Never enough. Never enough._

_“ Ir!”_

_Not a barked order, he noticed, more of a broken plea. The sort of thing you’d expect to hear from someone falling from a cliff, or the last choked scream of someone watching a bullet fly at them at 1800 miles an hour._

_There was hardly any noise in the resulting commotion, but he had a strong urge to cover his ears. _Enough_, he would yell if he had the power. Enough, enough, enough. Go away. Everything just needed to go away._

_He found he couldn’t even move his arms. Too weak. Even in death, even in the final wish of a broken boy suffering too soon, 'too weak' punctuated his life. The incompetence took his eyelids next, and his thoughts soon after._

The light was blinding.

Colors and sights seemed to slowly, slowly load into definition. The fuzzy white turned into sharpness, the glints of the ultraviolet spectrum shining off the tiny bulbs within the… laboratory light. The brightest laboratory light he’d ever seen.

He was strong enough to sit up, but he didn’t want to. He was draped in a blanket, his state overall reminiscent of an autopsy, an empty shell staring at the ceiling. He lifted his hand and pressed a section of sheet between his thumb and forefinger. Pilly, fuzzy. Certainly not medical grade. With a dull ache in his elbow, he tilted his arm up to look at his covering. Blue, spotted with green UFOs and smiling grey aliens.

An alien’s attempt at creature comfort.

Gingerly, he pulled his arms behind him, propping himself up and looking around. God, was his neck stiff. If he made it through tonight, perhaps he’d impart onto Zim the impact the advent of the _pillow _had on human culture. The first thing he noticed was that directly beside him was a tray of tools. These weren’t tools for dissecting him to find a way to take over the human race (did he even really care about that, anymore?) but the kind you’d find in any surgeon’s arsenal. The most fully-furnished set of medical mechanisms he’d ever laid eyes on. Fully-furnished except, of course, a scalpel.

Goddamn wards and their goddamn sharps.

Between the tray and his body was his arm, supporting his weight. He noticed it’d been wrapped as tight as inhumanly possible in sterile bandages. _Strangely_ sterile. As if they’d been placed there only hours before. He picked at the exposed edge and-

“Don’t touch those.”

Matter of fact, as always.

Normally, any verbalization by his terrible green neighbor would be met with an exclamation of “I know what you’re doing!” or “You won’t get away with this!”, but at present, the only thing that felt appropriate was a sore-throated, quiet…

“Hi, Zim.”

Zim crossed the lab floor, accompanied dutifully by his robot companion. “I was wondering when you would wake up. A combination of human endurance and alien technology has truly made the human body durable, I see.” His metallic arms unfolded from his PAK, stretching him up to meet Dib at the table. And extended a hand. “Now. Hand it over.”

He wasn’t going to hand it over. Zim could search him a billion times and he wouldn’t reveal it, his willpower to hold onto it was so tested, so strengthened. No way, no how, was he going to…

Of his own free will, though somewhat involuntarily, he reached into his pocket and produced a single, pointed screw.

“I was wondering where that went,” Zim remarked. He set it upon the surgical tray, which fell from its supporting legs and clattered to the ground with perfect comedic timing. Zim blinked at it before retraining his eyes on a somewhat ashamed Dib.

“Now, Dib…”

Oh great. This could go the alien route, or the everyone-else-on-this-planet route. And drawing from past experience, the alien route was more preferable. On that path, Zim would laugh at his failures and his misgivings, that trademark cackle that plagued Dib’s past world-saving attempts. He would announce some new plan, revel for a bit in the fact that his human arch-nemesis was too weak to stop him, bind him to this table with mechanical shackles a la spy movies, and leave him here to watch.

Otherwise, if Zim decided to act “normal”, they would have a talk. The you’re-such-a-fortunate-kid, you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like-to-truly-want-to-die, chemical-imbalances-be-damned talk. The the-doctors-told-you-it’s-all-in-your-head talk. The I-can’t-deal-with-you-when-you-act-like-this talk. The look-how-much-you’ve-hurt-your-family-by-doing-this talk. The we’re-having-you-recomitted talk.

“I want to congratulate you.”

Oh. What?

Zim wasn’t a master at recognizing facial expressions, but even the blind could’ve seen Dib’s shock in that moment. And so, Zim elaborated on this new, third route he had carved for the two of them to begin their journey on. “Between my finding you in my lair and this incident, you went 25 days without a self-injurious outburst. In my two years of observation, this appears to be a new record for you. And I want to congratulate you.”

Before Dib could even take in the air to say _Have I really been here 25 days? _or _Have you really been watching me that closely in two years? _or _Does my family know where I am?_, his thoughts were violated by a jarringly loud POP! and a shower of smoky-smelling confetti.

“Wee-hee-hee-hee! Yay Dib!”

Zim was irate.

“_Gir! _I informed you that this was a very serious and solemn occasion and under _no_ circumstances were you to bring a confetti popper, _and you were most certainly not supposed to set it off_! This is a very fragile moment and you should _know _enough about humans by now to not disobey _direct orders _to-“

Dib chuckled.

One genuine, whole-hearted, sunshine-y second of laughter escaped his throat. Gir could always be relied on to be Gir, of course, and his antics were nothing if not incredibly entertaining. What a stark contrast, confetti on bandages on lab table within the lair where, only 25 days ago, he’d thought it was all over. Not just thought, but whole-heartedly _felt_. And for a brief moment, he felt laughter. He felt blinding light of a different sense, this one not burning his eyes but warming him internally, if only for the slightest flicker of time. In the grand scheme of the existence of the universe, the grand scheme of time and existence itself, this moment would be trillions and trillions and trillions of times smaller than anything known to man. But wow, was it a bang. Wow, did it feel so _big_.

Dib collapsed forward into Zim’s arms, crying with all his might. No words had yet been invented to describe which particular emotion Dib was feeling at that time, or just what was expressing itself through his tears. Was it simply the same, everyday sadness he had found himself unable to shake since he last could remember, the same sadness which brought him to a crying point like this each day? Was it a new, distinct flavor of sadness, blending itself into the dark thundercloud that had already loomed above him? Was it happiness? Relief? Exhaustion? Zim’s PAK arms lowered them both to the ground and then retracted, leaving a sobbing 12-year-old human boy lying on the floor in the arms of his alien arch-nemesis, who was rubbing his back with an understanding silence.

_Fizz. Fizz. Fizz. _Teardrops splashed onto Zim’s exposed skin, leaving bubbling, steam, and smoke in their wake.

There was no measure of how long they sat there with each other, Zim's lengthier and lengthier quiet saying unmistakably "_When you’re ready to talk, I will listen, Dib-monster_.” Dib cried until his body stopped giving him tears, then cried more, until his face was soaked and his breath was sputtery and the sounds of his sobs dissipated, becoming further and further apart until he was eventually a welcome guest in the silence.

“I failed, Zim.” He managed to say, words pushing past the sickly throwing-up feeling threatening his throat. “I really messed up.”

“You did not fail, Dib.” No Dib-monsters or Dib-stinks or even Dib-humans to be found. Dib. Refreshing. “The world gave a mission, and whether you want to believe it or not, you succeeded at your mission for 25 days. I was afraid that doing this earlier may have discouraged you, but I’m going to share with you your previous record.”

Dib closed his eyes as Zim inhaled for his next statement.

“Three.” Zim cleared his throat, emitting a… stifled sniffle that Dib was not aware Zim had it in him to produce. “Your previous time record without an occurrence of self-injurious behavior or thoughts of self-injury was three days. You’ve made an improvement of 833%. And you’ve succeeded in your mission.”

Zim continued. “I may not fully understand the mission to which you’ve been assigned by life. But I do understand that you have smiled 143 times in the past 600 hours. You have laughed now once, the first time in approximately six Earth months that you’ve been able to do so. You have held 50 conversations with Gir with an average duration of 12 minutes and 16 seconds. And you have hummed 13 notes of a tune, when you thought I wasn’t observing you. I don’t know what they call that on Earth, but where I come from they call it a success.”

Dib knew the answer within the same second that Zim had asked the question, but it took him an additional 2 minutes and 12 seconds to accept it as the truth, and to provide a response. “On Earth they call that ‘recovery’. On Earth they call that ‘getting better’.”

“Success is not a straight path. Even my Tallest have not had a 100% success rate in their endeavors, and they love straight paths. I take it ‘recovery’ is not a straight path either?”

Dib nodded.

“Wonderful. Then it’s settled. ‘Recovery’ and ‘success in your life mission’ are synonymous. They’re both strenuous, lengthy, sometimes grueling processes, yes, but the processes are one in the same. You were successful.”

A few more seconds. “I was successful.”

“Would you like waffles?”

Dib blinked. “What?”

“You can’t embark on your new, twenty-_six _day journey without sustenance! And Gir has stolen an abundance of toaster waffles from the refueling station on the corner near skool. We can stay down here and discuss your new plan for ‘recovery’.”

144 smiles. Enough.

“I’d really like that, Zim."


End file.
